THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GILLESPIE: A password is required to read this column

Thursday

Jun 29, 2017 at 11:17 AM

By Jay Gillespie

For a society that is becoming far more inclusive and socially open (apparently), it is ironic that we now rely on so many passwords to maintain our privacy.

When we were kids passwords were simple. There were essentially two passwords that you had to know: Ollie Ollie Oxen Free and something to do with Ali Baba and Open Sesame.

Now the amount of things that require passwords is bordering on ridiculous. A short list of the places and/or sites that I currently need passwords for include my ATM account, my CD Baby Account, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Google, Aspen, Baseline Edge, Blogger, Naviance, Facebook, JetBlue, iTunes, PayPal, Banjo Hangout, VistaPrint, Aesop (now known as Frontline), not to mention needing various PIN numbers necessary for places like the doctor’s office (don’t get me started), Bank of America, TD Bank, my FitBit account, and Netflix along with the 20 I am probably forgetting.

Pearson Education (the people that bring us the PARCC exam), require a password that includes at least 17 digits (but they strongly encourage you to make it three times longer and incorporate both upper and lower case Old English letters). Pearson also requires that you include no fewer than three numbers but those numbers must be taken from between 123 and 137.

Apple asks you a series of preliminary security questions for those times when you might forget your password. “What was your least favorite job?” That’s a tough one. Hmmm. All of them? The rest of the questions seem simple enough to answer, that is, until Apple tells you that your answers are incorrect. “What was your first car?” A Datsun? Wrong! “What was your childhood dog’s name?” Daisy? Wrong! And my grandmother’s name was, indeed, Stella (your Marlon Brando impersonation here), even though Apple is quick to tell me that their security team knows more about my grandmother than I do. Needless to say, our apparent need for passwords in this day and age is becoming incredibly frustrating.

I tried to order a pizza from Papa Gino’s last Friday. When I gave them the phone number that they required (not that Papa Gino’s has ever decided to call me offering to make me lunch), they claimed that they could not find me in their data base and were unable to continue the order. Do I need to be in their data base in order to get a pizza?

Staples is no different with their reliance on digital records. Every time I pick something up at Staples I am asked if I am a Staples Rewards Member. I say “yes” because I specifically remember signing on as a member at the Staples on Mystic Ave. while living in Somerville in 2006. That information, however, is never sufficient enough to warrant me any chance at a reward. Staples has never again been able to locate my information, making it more difficult to go through the process multiple times rather than just supply them with a few extra nickels and be able to leave the store before the next millennium.

In similar fashion, Best Buy requires you to have a password in order to earn valuable points but they don’t tell you that your points expire after two months, which is the exact amount of time it takes you to access the password that was supposed to earn you the points in the first place.

And while I am at it, is there anything more frustrating that not being able to get into the ATM despite the fact that you have run your card through the slot virtually every possible way no fewer than 800,000 times?

I say that all Americans should rebel against the need for secret digital codes and come together with one universal password that we will all use from this point forward. That password will be Ollie Ollie Oxen Free.

Jay Gillespie has experience as a writer, comedian, musician, radio personality, and is a local history teacher.